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Melting Pot Describes a Model of Ethnic Relations in Which a Nation

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Melting Pot Describes a Model of Ethnic Relations in Which a Nation Melting Pot Describes a model of ethnic relations in which a nation-state's constituent ethnic groups engage in a process of reciprocal fusion. This can take either of two forms: 1) all ethnic groups acculturate to a universalistic set of values and symbols with no ancestral connotations, or 2) there is two-way influence between ethnic groups in the society such that no ancestral group achieves symbolic dominance. The melting pot process should not be confused with one-way assimilation to an ethnic core. In effect, its telos admits of no less than a fusion of all the groups known to mankind through 'democratic association', Talcott Parsons' highest evolutionary universal. (Parsons 1964:353-56) The agent of dissolution of ethnic bonds is typically liberal individualism, although the socialist melting pot of Soviet Man would qualify as would the melting process that occurred within religious sects like the Druze (during their dynamic phase) and the Mormons.(Rasiak 1980: 161; Smith 1986: 111-12) In addition, periods of ethnic fusion and fluidity - such as those which preceded the emergence of the Mestizos, Japanese, Central Asian Turks or English, may be classified as instances of the melting phenomenon. (Akiner 1997) With regard to empires, the usual pattern is ethnic hierarchy, though some Imperial civilizations, like the Assyrian or late Roman, appear to have been more universalistic, and hence more similar to the ideal-type of the melting pot. Finally, religious civilizations like Christendom or the Dar-ul-Islam may also be considered melting-pots, albeit at the elite level. (Smith 1990: 4) The term 'melting pot' was first introduced in 1908 by Israel Zangwill, a British Jew. Zangwill, a confirmed internationalist, worked with the International Territorial Association to resettle Russian Jews in the United States. His ideas were in turn shaped by the internationalist Jewish thinking of the late nineteenth century that pre-dated Zionism and found its most clear American exponent in Felix Adler. Adler, a lapsed rabbinical candidate who later taught at Columbia University, formed the Ethical Culture Society in 1876 which called for "a new religion where we may all grasp hands as brothers united in mankind's common cause." His work went on to influence the Liberal Progressive caucus of the Americanization movement, which included such figures as John Dewey, Jane Addams and W.I. Thomas. (Lissak 1989) When Zangwill's play was first introduced to American audiences, the idea of the United States as a universal melting pot was virtually nonexistent, even though American liberals like Emerson or Jefferson had made rhetorical use of universalist statements in earlier eras. (Harper 1980) After Zangwill's popular play, the term melting pot began to gain currency but it was basically taken to refer to anglo-conformist assimilation, and several have commented that the term actually came to describe a "transmuting pot" rather than a melting pot. (Gordon 1964: 89; Herberg 1955: 34) With respect to the American case, therefore, the term has served as a receptacle for a wide variety of paradigms, from the dominant conformist to the pluralist. (Gleason 1992: 15) In structural terms, the American melting pot certainly did not come to fruition until the decade of the 1960's, when the immigration quota system was removed, African- Americans achieved civil rights, electoral districts were reapportioned and anglo- conformity subsided. Since then, progress towards a melting pot in the United States has been rapid: inter-ethnic marriage has become a national norm (except with respect to 1 African-Americans and some Asian and Hispanic groups), and most ethnic groups have achieved socioeconomic parity with British Americans. (Battistella 1989: 134-140) The demographic data on inter-ethnic marriage has also breathed new life into melting-pot ideology since the 1960's, particularly among American neoconservatives, but also among liberals opposed to multiculturalism in education, government and the universities. (Salins 1997, Fukuyama 1995: 320, Schlesinger 1991, Sollors 1986, Hollinger 1995) This is not to say that the melting pot is the dominant ideological or heuristic paradigm in the United States. Political opponents of the idea, whether of the neonativist right or communitarian left, are especially scathing in denouncing the abstract, cultureless society that the concept may bring forth. (Novak 1972; Bellah 1985; Brimelow 1995) Scholarly critiques, meanwhile, have tended to emphasize resistance to the melting pot from ethnic elites and social movements. They also point out that intermarriage does not necessarily eliminate ethnic boundaries and practices. (Gans 1979; Waters 1990) References 1. Akiner, Shirin 1997 "Melting-pot - salad bowl - cauldron? Manipulation and mobilisation of ethnic and religious identities in Central Asia", Ethnic and Racial Studies, 20, 2. 2. Bellah, Robert N., 1996 (1985) Habits of the Heart, 2nd ed. (London: University of California Press). 3. Brimelow, Peter 1995 Alien Nation: Common Sense About America's Immigration Disaster (New York, NY: Random House). 4. Fukuyama, Francis 1995 Trust: The Social Virtues and the Creation of Prosperity (London: Penguin). 5. Gans, Herbert. 1979 "Symbolic Ethnicity: The Future of Ethnic Groups and Cultures in America," Ethnic and Racial Studies 2: 1-20. 6. Gleason, Philip 1992 Speaking of Diversity: Language and Ethnicity in Twentieth- Century America (Baltimore and London: Johns Hopkins University Press). 7. Gordon, Milton 1964 Assimilation in American Life: the Role of Race, Religion and National Origins (New York, NY: Oxford University Press). 8. Harper, Richard Conant 1980 The Course of the Melting Pot Idea to 1910 (New York, NY: Arno Press). 9. Herberg, Will 1955 Protestant, Catholic, Jew: An Essay in American Religious Sociology (Garden City, NY: Country Life Press). 10. Hollinger, David A. 1995 Postethnic America: Beyond Multiculturalism (New York, NY: Harper Collins). 11. Lissak, Rivka Shpak 1989 Pluralism and Progressives: Hull House and the New Immigrants, 1890-1919 (Chicago: University of Chicago Press). 12. Novak, Michael 1972 The Rise of the Unmeltable Ethnics: Politics and Culture in the Seventies (New York, NY: Macmillan). 13. Parsons, Talcott 1964 "Evolutionary Universals in Society", American Sociological Review, 339-357. 2 14. Rasiak, Ruslan O. 1980 " 'The Soviet People': Multiethnic Alternative or Ruse? In Edward Allworth (ed), Ethnic Russia in the USSR: The Dilemma of Dominance. New York, NY: Pergamon Press), pp. 159-171. 15. Salins, Peter D. 1997 Assimilation, American Style (New York, NY: Basic Books). 16. Schlesinger, Arthur M. 1991 The Disuniting of America (New York, NY: W.W. Norton). 17. Smith, Anthony D. 1986 The Ethnic Origins of Nations (Oxford: Blackwell). 18. Smith, Anthony D. 1990 'The Supersession of Nationalism?', International Journal of Comparative Sociology, vol. XXXI, 1-2, pp. 1-25 19. Sollors, Werner. 1986. Beyond Ethnicity: Consent and Descent in American Culture (New York, NY: Oxford University Press). 20. Waters, Mary C. 1990 Ethnic Options: Choosing Identities in America (University of California Press, Berkeley). Assimilation 3 The term 'assimilation' describes a process whereby members of an ethnic group take on the cultural and structural characteristics of another ethnic or national community. In the last instance, this results in the group exchanging its previous identity (in the eyes of self and other) for the new one. Hence assimilation is a broad term, covering many varieties of cultural change, and is thus applicable to individuals who 'convert' to the cultures and identities of ethnic groups, civic nations and universalist cosmopolitanisms. On the other hand, assimilation is not the correct term for describing the kind of two-way cultural fusion characteristic of the melting-pot phenomenon. The assimilationist perspective of the Chicago School tradition, which grew from liberal-progressive roots, informed ethnic relations theory in the United States from the 1920's until the 1960's. (Park 1950; Laczko 1995: 32) However, prior to Milton Gordon's formulation of 1964, the term was rather loosely used by both professionals and the American lay public and covered a wide variety of processes, from acculturation to 'melting-pot' fusion. In response to this terminological confusion, Gordon put forth a systematic seven-variable model of the assimilation process as it applied to the United States: cultural assimilation, the first stage, was followed by structural, marital, identificational, attitude receptional, behaviour receptional and civic assimilation. (Gordon 1964: 71) The assimilation process is, to a great degree, universal, unlike the melting pot, examples of which are much more limited. For example, Fredrik Barth's concept of the permeability of ethnic boundaries is implicitly grounded on the idea that migrants come to be assimilated into adjacent groups. (Barth 1969) In the classical world, for instance, Romans assimilated members of many groups, especially the Gauls, into their ranks while Greece assimilated a great many Slavic migrants and invaders in the early medieval period. (Deutsch 1966: 120; Smith 1986: 96) The Jews, Magyars, Zulus and English are other examples of ethnies that have participated strongly in this process. (Francis 1976: 28-31 and 93-94) The direction of assimilation is also variable. For instance, Czechs tended to become Germans in nineteenth-century Bohemia, but the reverse occurred in the twentieth century.
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